In the current business environment, it is often times difficult to allocate resources for a business. Typically, a business needs employees for certain days and/or certain times, but cannot afford to hire either full-time or part-time workers. Thus, the customer experience often suffers when customers are not tended to quickly or otherwise required to wait long periods of time to obtain items or services, lowering the goodwill those customers associate with the business. This, in turn, often lowers the number of customers as well as the money made by the business. This issue is compounded when the business includes a plurality of geographically dispersed business locations. In that situation, the owner allocates employees to each location to serve customers. However, on any given day or for any given time, it may be that a particular location has too few employees to deal with customers while, at a different location, there are too many employees such that one or more is idle.
While some customers have begun to turn to online shopping to avoid particular businesses altogether, this still generally includes significant drawbacks. Conventional online shopping is a one-way experience in which customers select their items, enter their billing information, enter their shipping information, and receive a confirmation when they are charged. However, it is often the case that customers have inquiries about a particular item or service. In those situations, the website often does not include the information the customer desires, and there is also often no manner of quickly contacting someone associated with that web site. Typically, the websites offer an e-mail address, but these often go unanswered or include directions to refer to other information in the website that has already been indicated by the customer to be deficient. Thus, customers can be displeased with the service from online retailers, as there is no person-to-person interaction.
Consequently, there is a continuing need for providing flexible, on-demand, person-to-person service to fulfill customer needs.